1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to repair of crankshafts of internal combustion engines. More particularly, the present invention relates to the repair of the crankshaft ring gear of an internal combustion engine wherein a removable gear comprised of two gear half sections is attached to the crankshaft with a plurality of fasteners that extend circumferentially about the ring gear at an annular flange and which hold the ring gear at the annular flange to a raised annular rib portion of the crankshaft.
2. General Background of the Invention
The repair of crankshafts for small internal combustion engines such as the engines of lawn mowers, tractors, automobiles and the like is relatively straight forward. There are however, very large internal combustion engines such as the compressor engines that are used in the offshore oil and gas industry to transmit natural gas from an offshore or like remote location to pipelines and then in shore. These compressors can be very large, some as large as a house. For example, Cooper Bessemer compressors use engines that range between about 750 and 4000 horse power. Repair of these engines presents special problems.
Some patents have issued that relate to the repair of crankshafts. One example is U.S. Pat. No. 5,539,979 issued to Powers and entitled "Method and Apparatus for Repairing the Rear Seal Area on the Crankshaft of an Internal Combustion Engine".
A split bearing eccentric drive is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,319.
The Sverdlin Patent 4,609,312 discloses an apparatus for an in-situ crankshaft reconditioning that includes a bracket connectable to the crankshaft webs in a variety of sizes and configurations.
One of the problems of repairing very large crankshafts in a remote environment (such as the oil and gas well drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico) is that of repairing the crankshaft when the ring gear must be replaced. In such a hostile and remote environment, the expense of completely disassembling the engine and removing the entire crankshaft can be expensive.